The Grand Staircase and Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument

He liked his ears scratched. Outside the Visitors Center in Escalante.

The Grand Staircase was going to get its own page, but since it has its own National
Monument, I thought I'd just combine the two for conveniences sake.

When I first came through this area in 1997, I had absolutely no clue
on what I was seeing as I drove upwards in time from the Grand Canyon through Zion and
Bryce Canyon, then up Utah-12 and 24. You saw the exhibits in the visitors centers
and signs around the parks, but they form a disjointed picture because of the
local-centric explanations. Most of the information would tie some formations
in the park to other areas of Utah, but mostly missing was the background for it all.

So let's see if we can just hit the highlights...

Profile of the Grand Staircase in Utah/Arizona. Click for a larger view.

200 to 300 million years ago, North America was part of the super-continent
Pangaea. Because of its location within Pangaea, little moisture ever reached
"North America" making it an almost lifeless desert.
For millions of years, sand blew in and covered the area creating sand dunes,
and as more layers were deposited, the older layers were compressed
into sandstone.

About 130 million years ago (after the breakup of Pangaea) an inland
sea formed in the sub-tropical environment, covering most of middle
America from what is now the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
Millions of generations of hard-shelled sea creatures lived, then
died and formed the limestone of middle America. The shallow,
sub-tropical sea shore was perfect for evolving the dinosaurs we
know of today, which is why dinosaur fossils are found all over the
central US, mostly in the deserts and badlands where little erosion
takes place.

The most important event happened 70 million years ago, when the Pacific
(tectonic) Plate collided with the North American Plate and started pushing
its way under at a rate of about 2 inches per year. As more
of the Pacific Plate moved "Eastward" and under the North American
Plate, it pushed (and is pushing) the North America Plate upward,
creating some structures still visible today, like the Rocky Mountains,
the Waterpocket Fold, and The Grand Staircase. As this uplift occurred,
it drained the inland sea, which is why you can find marine fossils
thousands of feet above sea level in places like Utah, and in the badlands
of Western Nebraska.
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And there you have it. That up thrust 70 million years ago caused huge faults
that would push one area higher than another. The friction of the plates moving
against one another melted the volcanic basalt rock, and the lighter stuff
in the dense rock floated to the top. This lighter stuff, called granite,
formed the Rocky Mountains as they were pushed high into the air over time.

While the granite was pretty tough stuff, the softer sandstone to the West
was not. It eroded away after millions of years, forming some of the
odd formations out West. One of these is the Grand Staircase, which is a
large area of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.
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The Grand Staircase

Another profile of the Grand Staircase in Utah/Arizona. Click for a larger view.

It's easy to see why the area would be called The Grand Staircase,
just by looking at a cross-section of the phenomenon. A huge up thrust forced the
rock upward, which eroded down by plates, exposing the different colored layers laid
down over hundreds of millions of years in sort of a staircase, stepping down
until you get to the Grand Canyon.

It's thought the North American plate in this region has been pushed up 5,000 to
10,000 feet, with the youngest and highest exposed rock around the Markagunt Plateau.

It's called a journey through time because in the (relatively) short drive, you
travel over a layer of relatively young rock at the top of Bryce Canyon, around
140 million years old, to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where the rock is
somewhere around 1700 to 1800 million years old. That's over a billion
and a half years of geologic history in some 300 to 400 linear miles.

Looking at it another way, the oldest rock in Bryce Canyon National Park is
roughly the same as the youngest rock in Zion National Park. The oldest rock in
Zion, is the same layer as the youngest rock in Grand Canyon. So just by visiting those
three parks, you can see over 1.5 billion years of exposed, sedimentary rock.

You can also from the cross section, the up thrust under the Grand Canyon area
was the cause of the buzz saw effect of the Colorado against the rock.
As the ground moved upward, the river cut its channel deeper, trapping it
within deep canyons.

It is another geologic wonder transversed by US-89, though other roads that
transverse the Staircase, like Utah-12 are just as spectacular.
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Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument

Cropped map of a terrible map of Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument from the BLM website.

There was a lot of controversy over the creation of Grand Staircase - Escalante.
It was widely seen as a 3000 square mile land grab, by a president in an election
year who had no chance of winning the state of Utah. The park wasn't even
dedicated in Utah, but in Grand Canyon in Arizona, even though Bryce Canyon and
Capitol Reef National Parks and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area touch the
National Monument's borders. Utah was also the home state of the candidate the
POTUS was running against. Of course, all of that had to be coincidence.

And while it is a desert, with zip codes with less than two people per square mile in it,
it's still larger than the state of Delaware! If you travel to the interior of the
park, make sure you have emergency supplies just in case. Should you be off the beaten path
(not that there are a lot of beaten paths in the first place), it could take days for you
to be found. This is not a place to win Darwin Awards because you blindly followed a
GPS.

We were staying the night in Escalante, so we decided to try to get to one of
the rock gardens in the park, one of the few places that doesn't require you to
have a high-clearance, 4WD vehicle. It was 14 miles down a gravel road, which
became a wash boarded hell seven miles in. Even if you think your car can handle
that, remember your suspension will already be loaded with all your luggage,
supplies and people, amplifying the bad road surface. I aborted the trip and
had a delicious dinner in town.

Bottom line, if you don't have a high-clearance vehicle you're better off
spending your time at Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef or Kodachrome Basin. On
the other hand, if Georgie's Cafe is still open in Escalante, stop in for
lunch or dinner. So what if she only has four tables. The food
was excellent.

Since some of Utah-12 runs through the park, some images are duplicated here.
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It's funny that I can't really recommend Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument as a place to visit for the casual traveler, but I highly recommend
seeing the established sights on the Grand Staircase itself. Cedar Breaks, Bryce
Canyon, Zion, Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon are the big parks, but Kodachrome Basin
and Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Little Colorado River Gorge, and many
of the public areas along US-89 and Utah-12 are also showcases of awesome
scenery and geology.

Related Links

The Utah-12 page might have more images of Grand Staircase-Escalante than this page.
It's hard to tell where you are on the road without GPS coordinates. US-89 (older than
the Monument) transverses the Southern part of the Park by the base of the Vermillion Cliffs
before entering Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Utah State Route 12 (also named as the
"Journey Through Time Byway") is my favorite road in America.

The 124 mile road starts at a unnamed junction with US-89 and ends in
Torrey, Utah, pretty much connecting Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef
National Park. In-between are a couple of those spectacular Utah
State Parks, a National Monument and some jaw-dropping landscapes
just off the side of the road.

US-89 is a remarkable road that follows some of the
most scenic areas of the West from Canada to Arizona, and along the way passes
through (or comes within a few miles of) over a half dozen major Western Parks.
Glacier to Yellowstone to Grand Teton, Bryce, Zion, Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon.

I've actually frequented this road quite a bit, but in a disjointed, non-continuous
fashion.